


one week with you (is one week in heaven)

by miss_tatiana



Category: Spies Are Forever - Talkfine/Tin Can Brothers
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Post canon, i tweaked some things in canon but most of it is in line, slow ish burn, tati has a Lot of ptsd, theres some internalized homophobia but she works through it, theyre just gay and in love ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2019-03-19 11:27:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13703520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_tatiana/pseuds/miss_tatiana
Summary: Tatiana has been living in a safehouse off the grid for nearly a year since the Prussian affair. She's never felt more isolated, more disfunctional, more useless. When Cynthia sends Barb up to evaluate her and see if she's ready to join the agency and come back to the field, she tries to seem as together as she can so that they'll still want her. Oh, and she tries not to fall in love.





	1. day one

**Author's Note:**

> so i've been working for a while on this and i'm finally calling it finished. chapters will go up on fridays and mondays. enjoy !!

Tatiana had done what Mega told her to, and gone off the grid. Her instinct was to fight anything he said to her, but she knew he was right on that one. Plus, after they spent that time together at his mother’s house, she’d gained a new respect for him. Didn’t mean she agreed with everything he said, but she still listened to him when it benefitted her. And after he told her the truth about Chimera, that there were many more warehouses to blow up before she could be with her family again, she didn’t have anything else to do but listen. 

So. She was off the grid. She couldn’t go home to Russia yet for obvious reasons, even though she wished herself there every day. She couldn’t stay with Mega in America, although he offered again and again, and although Cynthia begged her to stay and work for the agency. England was a definite no too, as was most of Eastern Europe. She’d had it narrowed down to South America or Canada, and she preferred colder temperatures. Her home was now a log cabin without electricity save for solar panels, so far North in Canada that the ground never unfroze. 

At first, she thought she would enjoy the time alone. She wouldn’t be bothered and it would be nice to have some peace and time to process things. She hadn’t stayed still since she was four. She might need it. She told herself those things every day, as she sat in front of her fireplace, bored out of her mind. As it turned out, she wasn’t suited for a statuary life.

She and Mega had deemed it unsafe to be in contact more than once every couple of months, and now, as she was bordering on a year in this exile, she had only met him in person once. She’d never found herself missing someone before, and at first she wouldn't admit it, but as time wore her down, she did. She even told him once, during one of their video calls. He’d immediately said that he missed her as well. Curt Mega, quick to love.

It wasn’t just him, though. Tatiana found herself looking back on that entire ragtag team with such fondness that it hurt her sometimes. She’d never had a group like that before, she was so used to working solo. Many of her nicest memories stemmed from that night, the night she was sure none of the others remembered, lightweights as they were. She came again and again to Barb’s giddiness over being included, over being in the field, over having a mission. It had been adorable. 

Tatiana couldn’t recall her first mission - she was so young at the time, and she had done so much in the years since to try and block it out - but even if she could, it wouldn’t have been like Barb’s. She hadn’t been working with friends then. 

Were they her friends? Mega definitely was. She wasn’t sure about him before she left him to die and the hands of the Deadliest Man, but by the time she came back for him, she knew he was a nice guy. While they waited at his mother’s house for him to recover, the talk they had was definitely personal, full of things things you’d only share with a friend. She wondered if she was the first person he’d come out to. He was the first person she had come out to. The Informant, whoever he was, had lightened the mood considerably that night. Any worry they had over going into such an important mission was quickly erased not only by the alcohol but also by his jokes, by his easy friendship. She didn’t know if there was ever a funeral service for him, but they wouldn’t have been able to pull off the mission without him. And Barb… 

Barb’s naivety, her innocence to being in the field, was captivating. She was also quick to friendship, and to oversharing, not unlike Mega. Tatiana had a feeling that it wasn’t just the alcohol that made her clingy and sweet, but that those were just normal aspects of her personality. After they had all had a few drinks, though, Barb stopped leaning on Mega and started leaning on Tatiana. 

Tatiana remembered the warmth of Barb’s cheek against her shoulder, and getting some of Barb’s hair in her mouth accidentally. Barb very obviously couldn’t hold her liquor well.

Tatiana stood and stretched. She’d been sitting in front of the fireplace for far too long, and she felt it in her back. She wondered if it was just the inactivity getting to her body, or if she was getting old. She was only just into her thirties, but she’d been doing physically demanding things her whole life. Now, her back was often sore. Sometimes, she had pains in her knees. She was used to her body hurting, but not like this. While she knew what to expect with, say, a gunshot or a stab wound, a pinched nerve in her back was completely new. She reached over her shoulder and rubbed the place that was bothering her. 

She didn’t have much to do in the cabin. Her days consisted of reading and thinking, of trying to get her solar panels to pick something up despite it perpetually being winter. She would mess around with them up on the roof, try to get them angled right, and hope to get enough sun that day to check the news. She had one piece of spy tech, a sort of tablet with a screen, that she used for communication. Her only connection to the outside world. 

It was difficult for her to stay in the dark, not just in terms of the lives of the people she cared about, but in terms of global news. So much of her job had relied on foreign news and relations that without it, she sort of just stewed in her own anxiety and memories. 

So she went up to the roof that day, tried to calculate where the sun would be when she finished messing with her panels, and commenced the arduous task of moving them. After a while, the sun hit a couple of them, and she was scared to keep readjusting their angle in case she messed them up. 

She went back inside and immediately plugged in her tablet, which was pretty much the only electronic she had. It lit up after a minute or so, and she wanted to get to the news so badly she almost didn’t see the messages. Almost. There were several of them from Cynthia, which was odd not only because Cynthia had never been in touch with her before, but also because she didn’t get many messages. 

Tatiana opened them, one after the other. They all started with the suggestion to ‘join us! whenever it’s safe to come down from old man winter’s icy ass’ and closed with ‘love, cynthia. p.s. could really use a competent agent’ or something along those lines. But the most recent one included a warning that someone would be by soon to check in with her. Cynthia made it very clear that she wasn’t putting Tatiana under the care of the agency, but she did say that a psych eval after a life of trauma and a year in solitude was probably in order, and Tatiana wouldn’t have to hold things back from another agent. 

Tatiana didn’t know what to feel. There was definitely excitement swirling around in her chest, eddying and building up in her. The thought of talking to someone about her actual experiences was thrilling, after a year of having no one to talk to but her neighbors - lived miles away and only came over twice, when she assumed a weak cover - and the occasional skier - they sometimes stopped, thinking it was a lodge, and Tatiana let them stay for a few hours anyways because she was lonely. She didn’t even know where she would begin, or what she would say. She wasn’t sure how much she would feel comfortable telling whoever was sent, and how much she would be able to say. She didn’t even know what they would ask. 

She put the tablet down without checking the news. Her cabin was a fucking mess. She made her bed, put some of the clothes strewn all over the floor into a basket to hide them, then went out to her living room and looked around. There was too much to do. Dirty dishes were strewn everywhere, and if she were to go into her kitchen, the sink would be so full of them as well that there wouldn’t be room to wash any. Papers and books littered every surface, and the floor in front of the fireplace. 

She made a feeble attempt to clean, but kept seeing something else and getting distracted, flitting from task to task without completing the previous one. 

Before she knew it, the sun passed out of the range of her panels and she had to light gas lamps to continue working. She was tired. She got tired so quickly now, like over the course of her year alone her energy had been continuously draining away. 

There was a knock on the door. 

Tatiana’s head snapped up, and she left the kitchen, where she’d been making a feeble attempt to wash some of her dishes. There wasn’t a date in the messages from Cynthia so there was no way to know for sure when the agent would be here, but she didn’t get many visitors. She wiped her hands on her pants and answered the door. 

“Hi!” Barb drew the word out, sounding just as excited and hyped up as she did when they met. She was bundled up under far to many layers, her scarf covering half her face. She put her bags - two, a duffel and a suitcase - down at the door and threw her arms around Tatiana’s neck.

“I didn’t know they would be sending you,” Tatiana said, feeling detached from her body as she tried to make sense of it. “Cynthia brought you back to your tech division?”

Barb picked her bags back up and came inside, throwing them onto the couch. “Of course. Turns out that members of the American government commit treason all the time, and there aren’t big repercussions. Plus, none of the other support agents knew what they were doing, and general didn’t need me that bad. She took Curt back as well, after a month or so.”

That shocked Tatiana even further. “Why? She always said- how you say- she said he was useless.”

Barb shrugged. “We both know he’s not. She was just so used to thinking of him as, like, second best, after Owen, that when Owen died she had nothing to compare him to. So she ripped on him, I guess. She loves him, though, in a… in an admittedly really weird way.”

“I’m…” Tatiana struggled for words. What could she say? That she was happy Barb had her job back? That she hadn’t talked to another person in a month and it was weird? That she was ecstatic to see one of her friends again? “I don’t have a guest room, I don’t know where you want to stay.” 

“The couch is fine- but Tatiana! I literally haven’t seen you in forever, how are you?” Barb had this huge smile on her face. 

Tatiana shrugged. “I’m bored. The place is-” She gestured around the room. “-messy, I didn’t have time to clean up.”

“Oh my god, I don’t care,” Barb exclaimed. “It’s just so good to see you again. Like, when we first met, that was my first time really doing something and making a difference with friends and then I thought I was never going to see you again. When Cynthia told me I could go be the one to evaluate you, I freaked out.”

Tatiana smiled for the first time since Barb arrived then. Maybe it was just hitting her, but she was suddenly aware that one of her friends was in her house, and was going to stay with her, and talk to her, and update her on everything that had happened since she last saw them. Then she started laughing, inexplicably, uncontrollably, for a reason she couldn’t pin down. Barb just sounded so much like… like Barb. “I’m sure you did,” she managed. 

“So, as you might know, Cynthia is a huge fan of you and your work,” Barb clasped her hands together. “She totally wants you to come and work with her after you’re cleared to come back to society and stuff. That’s why she sent me up here, I’m going to be here all week.” Something crossed her face. “That’s okay, right? If it’s not, I can just stay in a hotel… somewhere…”

“No, no, it’s fine.” Tatiana nodded. “I am glad to have the company, believe me.”

“Okay, thanks for having me.” Barb started to pull off her many layers of coats, hats, and scarves, piling them on the hooks near the door. “What I need to do is- have you ever had a psych evaluation before?”

Tatiana sighed. “I grew up in the KGB.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes, I have had too many to count,” she confirmed. She picked Barb’s bags up off the couch and set them near the door to the bedroom. 

Barb smiled. “Okay, great. So I’m just going to do one of those with you to send back to Cynthia, just so she can make sure you’re alright to put back in the field when you return. Cool?”

Tatiana still felt a little bit in shock, and she was having trouble phrasing the answers to Barb’s questions. “Cool.”

“So, it’s a three day thing, but we’re splitting them up, so it’s not too much to think about at once,” Barb explained. “I’ll just have a little tape recorder, and I’ll ask you questions once every other day, starting tomorrow.”

Tatiana nodded. “Alright. I- I do want to come back to America, I want to work with you and with Curt again.”

“Yay! Perfect,” Barb said with her usual enthusiasm, her voice squeaking up into higher registers. 

“How is he?” Tatiana asked. She knew that Curt prefered to shield what he was actually going through with a suave persona, so while she enjoyed their calls, she felt that he was putting on his best face for her. “How is Curt?”

Barb shrugged. “Better on some days, not better on others. Um, he’s- he’s really missing you, I guess.” She bit her lip, looked off into the kitchen. “He relies on people that are, like, unattainable when he has friends right next to him, but-” She shrugged again. “He’s gotta work through that on his own, I think.”

“So it seems.” Barb’s implication that Tatiana was falling into Owen’s role for Curt was uncomfortable, but perhaps true. She didn’t want to be cold to him, and they weren’t separated by choice. She knew she would never play him like Owen did. She shook it off. “More importantly, how are you?”

Barb waved the question away with a hand. “I don’t know if I’m more important than Curt, but I’m doing alright. The agency just got its budget for this year and I have a bigger percentage for my team than I’ve ever gotten before. I think they’re finally realizing how helpful technology can be.”

“How important you can be?” Tatiana raised an eyebrow at her. 

Barb laughed. “Maybe, I guess. Listen, Tatiana, I’m super glad to be here. Like, I begged Cynthia to let me come and-” She reached up and put a hand on Tatiana’s shoulder. “We really need to catch up.”

“Definitely,” Tatiana agreed. She was getting a little giddy, actually, at the thought of being able to talk to someone, especially someone she trusted and cared for. “Hey, I’ll take the couch if you would like to sleep on the bed.”

“Tati, I couldn’t…” Barb shook her head. 

“No, you have come all the way out here just to talk to me,” Tatiana insisted. Then, as she realized it, she added, “You let people make you sleep on the couch too much. Just accept a bed for once, alright?”

Barb tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “I don’t know if that’s a weird Russian metaphor, but, um, okay. Yeah, alright. Thanks for offering.” She picked up her bags and brought them to the bedroom, which Tatiana pointed out to her. 

Tatiana watched her unpack her bags - one full of clothes and one full of recorders and gizmos in various states of progress - from the doorframe. She was already feeling better, more natural, about having someone with her in the house. And if anyone was easy to talk to, it was Barb. 


	2. day two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tatiana tries to get past her mental block against telling the truth. she fails.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is uhhhh pretty gay, boys

“Let the record state that today, February third, nineteen sixty-three, is the first of three eval sessions with Tatiana Slozhno.” Barb cleared her throat. 

They sat across from one another at Tatiana’s kitchen table, the recorder laying between them, collecting their words for Cynthia. Last night, Barb had let Tatiana cook her dinner - with admittedly not much talent - and then they had talked for a little while before Barb suggested to get to sleep early, and to save any cool things that happened to her for the session. 

Now that Tatiana was there, though, with the recorder staring at her and Barb staring at her too from behind it, her mind went blank. This was going straight back to the agency, and if she let on how poorly she’d been taking care of herself, they might not want her. They might consider the lethargic person she’d become a liability. 

“So, Tatiana, I’m just going to read these questions off to you, and we can work through this list,” Barb said, looking down at a few sheets of paper she’d pulled out of a manila folder. “Um, first question. How involved have you been with the agency since the beginning of your hiatus?”

Tatiana unclenched her fists, realizing she’d been digging her fingernails into her palms. “I was never really involved with the agency. I talk to Curt sometimes.”

“Yeah, sorry, these questions are just the standard ones we ask agents who have been out of the field for a while, they might not all apply.” Barb adjusted her glasses. “Have you been keeping up to date with the agency’s activity?”

“No.” The way the question was worded made Tatiana feel guilty, like she should have been checking in with them, even though she knew it wasn’t in her power to do. 

“What made you leave the field? Again, these might not be totally applicable,” Barb apologized. 

Tatiana leaned closer to the recorder. There was a sort of nervous energy building in her, and every little noise she heard around the house drew her attention away just so she didn’t have to focus solely on the questions. “I thought I needed a break.” That was a lie. Why had she lied? She swallowed, and it seemed too loud. She hoped the recorder didn’t pick it up.

“Uh, alright.” Barb looked at her questioningly over the rims of her glasses. “What was the last mission you performed before hiatus?”

Tatiana was chewing her lip. “Prussian thing, and then the warehouse.”

Barb nodded. “Did any events of that mission impact your decision to take time off?”

“No. Not at all.” Another lie, what was wrong with her? Tatiana dug her nails into her thighs through her pants, hoping a bit of pain would clear her head and stop any more mistakes she might make. “Personal choice.”

Barb sighed, briefly letting her head rest in her hands. “Okay. Was your last mission a solo or a team?”

“Team.” 

“Is there anything that the agency does not know about the mission that you think should be on record?” Barb was looking to Tatiana expectantly. 

Tatiana was sure Barb and Curt had informed Cynthia of every detail already, and she wondered if Barb was just seeing if she’d pull another lie out of her ass. She hated that she couldn’t give a straight answer, but she couldn’t stop herself from doing it. She was keeping herself safe, as she’d always done. “No.”

“And was that mission a success?”

Had it been? Tatiana couldn’t begin to label it either one of a failure or a success. They had found Owen alive, success, but he had pulled the rug out from under them, failure. She, Curt, and Barb had survived, success, but the Informant had not, failure. They discovered Chimera, success, but they discovered the impossible extent of it as well, failure. They had blown up one warehouse, success, but there were god knows how many more still out there. Failure. Failure, failure, the information was still out there, indestructible, and Owen was dead but Curt wasn’t better, and her family still thought she was gone. “No.”

“Are you sure?” Barb’s tone of voice betrayed that she was going off script with this question. 

“I am sure.” If asked that question ten years ago about one of her KGB missions with a similar outcome, the answer would have been yes, it was a success. She had no value then in life, in friends. She was a weaker person now.

Barb looked concerned. “Right. In terms of mental stimulus, what have you been doing to keep yourself sharp?”

“Reading.”

“And?” Barb looked at her expectantly. 

“Reading.”

“Okay, um, was there a reason you were assigned to this spot for your hiatus?” Barb fiddled with the recorder for a moment, amplifying its reach to catch anything else Tatiana said quietly. “Or, in your case, why did you choose here?”

“It’s cold. It’s remote. No one dangerous is nearby.” Tatiana felt like a robot. If robots were capable of lying when telling the truth made them feel vulnerable. She was chucking out these automated responses, glancing again and again at her watch and wondering how long this would take. 

Barb looked at Tatiana for a while, then at her sheet of questions, then at the recorder. “Alright, that’s where we’re going to end it today. February third.” She clicked the recorder off. 

There was a silence that fell over the room, and stayed there for a while. Tatiana was looking anywhere that wasn’t occupied by either Barb or the recorder, and her foot began tapping a frantic rhythm on the floor, an old nervous habit that she thought she’d gotten rid of. 

“Tati? What happened?” Barb sounded apprehensive, a little nervous. 

Tatiana shook her head. “I don’t know.” Against her thoughts and what she was telling her body to do, it was getting a little difficult to breath. Her throat began to close up, and her face began to burn. She shook her head again, lifting a hand to cover her mouth. 

“What’s- what should I do?” Barb sounded panicked, and she got up and flitted around Tatiana as if scared to touch her. 

Before she could do anything to stop herself, Tatiana began to cry. She hadn’t cried since she and Curt thought she could go back to her family for that naive couple of days, and before that it wasn’t since she was a child. Tatiana was not a crier. 

“Are you okay?” Barb asked, and now she laid a gentle hand on Tatiana’s shoulder, standing beside her chair. 

Tatiana nodded, and she was sobbing. Tears coursed down her cheeks and over her hands, which were pressed against her mouth. She cried and cried and cried until she had exhausted herself, and she was completely dehydrated before she could talk again. She was trying breathing techniques that had been ingrained in her for as long as she could remember. Count out a waltz in your head and breath at the start of each measure. Inhale through the nose, exhale through the mouth. Try holding onto breaths for a second or two before you let them go. 

“Tati?” Barb asked, her voice smaller than it usually was. 

“I’m- sorry,” Tatiana got out, interrupted by the hiccups that rolled in after crying ended. She rubbed her face with her hands, and felt swollen and sore. 

“No, no, no, just-” Barb rubbed Tatiana’s shoulders. “What happened? Did I say something? Or…” After years of working with agents, she was more than used to having to be wary with her words, not knowing what could bring up a memory or act as a trigger for something. 

“I have been-” Tatiana touched her forehead with the heel of her hand, scolding herself. “-so useless, I-”

“What?”

“No, I have, I haven’t done anything, I cannot go out because someone might see me, I cannot see any of the people I care about, I-” She thought about stopping there. She’d already said too much. But once she started talking it was hard for her to stop, if it was to someone she trusted. “Curt and I agreed to not be in contact too frequently or else- or else someone might notice but-” She let out a sigh, telling herself to calm down and to not let her words get away from her. 

“So you’re just stuck here,” Barb said, taking Tatiana by the hand and leading her over to the couch, where they both sat. 

Tatiana nodded. “And I cannot be still. I’m not a still person, I don’t know why I thought this would be okay, but I have nothing to do and I’m going crazy.” She would have been crying again, if she had any tears left. 

“Hey, hey.” Barb gave her a hug, letting her lean her head on Barb’s shirt and staining it with residual tears. “I know exactly how you feel.”

“You do?” Tatiana murmured into Barb’s shoulder. She didn’t know how long it had been since she had human contact like this, and it was relaxing her almost instantly. The second Barb’s arms were around her, she could breathe again. 

“Yeah, of course,” Barb said, her voice musical and soothing. “What do you think it’s like for me when agents go out in the field? I’m stuck back at some HQ somewhere, out of reach, wondering if they’ll be alright. I don’t know anything unless they contact me, which they never do.” 

“Really?” Tatiana knew the words would be calming, but Barb’s voice would be more so. 

“Yep. Every time.” Barb sighed. “You’d think it’d get easier the more missions go by, but nope. It’s still stressful, and it still freaks me out a little.”

Tatiana sat up. “I hate it. I hate being here, I hate staying still, I hate not knowing.” She wiped her nose. 

“Do you have tea?” asked Barb, standing from the couch and traipsing back in the direction of the kitchen. 

“Um, yes. Top right cabinet above the stove,” Tatiana rattled off. “Wait, why?”

“I’m going to make some tea, and then we can gossip or do whatever you want.” Barb disappeared in the direction of the stove. 

Tatiana laughed quietly to herself. “Thanks.” She still wasn’t used to having another person in her vicinity that she could interact with. 

“Yeah, don’t worry about it. I pretty much exist to help you agents,” Barb’s voice came around the corner from the kitchen.

Tatiana was going to argue, but she realized that she really didn’t know anything about Barb beyond her work for the agency. She was tempted to ask, but it might come across as trying to change the subject. She wanted to try and be as open as possible, especially after breaking down over the evaluation. So she waited and kept her thoughts in her head until Barb returned with mugs of tea. 

“It was sort of hard to find two clean cups,” Barb said, handing one of them to Tatiana. 

“Sorry. I tried to do dishes before you got here, but…” Tatiana shrugged. “I lost track of time and not a lot got done.”

Barb nodded at her teacup, blew on the surface of the liquid. “Tati, are you alright? Like, I know alright-ness isn’t part of being a spy, but I’m a little worried about you.”

“I’m just stir crazy,” Tatiana said quickly. “I miss Curt, I missed you, I miss being in the field. It’s just throwing me off a little bit, I’m fine.” In fact, she was terrified that she wouldn’t prove good enough or sound enough or strong enough for the agency to want her. 

“You sure?” Barb looked over at her. 

“Yes, I just need to get back into action soon,” Tatiana insisted. 

“Okay,” said Barb, in a way that made it clear she didn’t think it was actually okay, and she could tell that Tatiana was lying to her. 

They sat for a few minutes in silence, sipping at their tea. 

Tatiana wished hers was spiked with something strong enough to alleviate her embarrassment and guilt over the situation, but she didn’t want to actually get one of the many liquors in her cabinet not only because they would clash with camomile, but because she wanted to look put together for Barb, for the agency. “I didn’t mean to lie on the evaluation. I don’t know why I did that.”

“Coping mechanism?” Barb suggested. “We’ve all been there.”

“I didn’t even mean to, it just… came out.” Tatiana bit her lip, looking down into her tea mug. “I really don’t know what happened, I just- I’m sorry I messed it up.” 

“It’s a three day eval for a reason,” said Barb, her voice comforting. “We space it out so you can prepare yourself mentally for answering questions about sensitive stuff. You spies go through a lot. Like, trauma. You have issues, I get it, this isn’t even the worst reaction to an eval I’ve seen.”

“That’s a lie to make me feel better,” Tatiana said, and she had to admit, it did make her feel better. Not the actual comment, but the sentiment behind it, that Barb was making up stuff so she’d be kinder to herself. 

Barb laughed, a sort of cute, squeaky laugh. “Maybe. You sort of did freak out.”

“I’m going to try to keep it together for the next two sessions,” Tatiana said, a promise to both Barb and herself, “but if I don’t, will you keep telling me things like that?”

Barb’s smile got, if possible, even warmer. “Does it make you feel better?”

“Yes.”

“Then definitely.”


	3. day three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tatiana gets to read some letters barb brought up from the agency. they also talk love lives.

It was Barb’s third day at the cabin, and they weren’t doing another eval session yet because protocol - and both of them - thought it best to space out sessions. They had gone out and Tatiana had shown her around the land that came with the house. It was mostly barren and frozen, a thick layer of snow in some places, some straggly evergreens pushing up between little hills. Then Barb had gotten cold and her shoes were getting wet, so they went back in and sat in front of the fire. 

Barb cooked dinner that day, and as it turned out, she was just as hopeless at it as Tatiana was. They took their plates down to the fireplace and sat and ate there, looking at each other or into the flames. 

“I’m sorry this turned out so bland,” Barb apologized, pushing her food around on her plate. “I’m an inventor, not a chef.”

“And I am not one either. Food is food, as long as we have it, we should eat it,” Tatiana returned. She didn’t want to hurt Barb’s feelings. 

“If Curt was here, maybe he could cook,” said Barb. 

Tatiana shook her head, laughing a little. Curt had cooked for her once, while they were at the safehouse and he didn’t want his mom to be doing any more work for them, and she wished she’d never even come over. “He cannot cook. He is worse than you are.”

“Right, you’re just saying that,” Barb replied. She was smiling. 

“No, I’m not, trust me,” said Tatiana, letting out a breath. “Ask him sometime… What are you going to tell him about me when you get back? I know he’s going to ask.” This was something that had been stressing Tatiana out for a while, and the thought of Curt knowing how far she’d fallen since going off the grid made her nauseous. 

Barb was still smiling. “Well, he’s super anxious to hear from you, like, even just news. He’ll probably want to listen to the evals, but he’ll only be able to if Cynthia lets him, and she might not. Then again, she’s trying to be nicer to him after the, um. Owen thing in the weapons facility. I have to tell him how you’re doing and all that.”

“Will you not tell him that I cried?” Tatiana asked. It seemed trivial, even childish, but she was used to Curt leaning on her, and didn’t want to give him the responsibility of reversing the roles. 

Barb shrugged. “Do you really want me to keep that from him?” She posed it just as a genuine question, she wasn’t trying to attach any guilt to it. 

But of course, the wording of it got to Tatiana, made her feel bad for even suggesting it. “I don’t know, I don’t want him to worry about me, especially if I’ll be stuck up here for a while longer. He has too much to worry over already without my problems.”

“Alright, if that’s what you want I won’t disclose it,” Barb said firmly, and she patted Tatiana’s shoulder. “Oh! But that reminds me, I have a bunch of stuff for you, hold on.” She went into Tatiana’s room, where she’d been sleeping, and returned with a bundle of letters. 

“Are those written to me?” Tatiana sat up straighter when they were given to her. “From who?”

“Um, one long one from Cynthia explaining why she wants you for the agency and what it would be like for you working there. You know.” She waved a hand. “Corporate. The rest are from Curt.” 

Tatiana ran her hands over the letters. They were all enclosed in the thick manilla trademark to the agency, with a little insignia even printed into the paper of some of them. She laid Cynthia’s on the ground - she’d get to that later - and looked through Curt’s. There were five of them, each addressed to her, but in a way that made it clear he was going to write a traditional address and then realized he had too little information. 

Her first name was in the center of the envelope, and then he’d forgotten he didn’t know her last name and left an empty space for it. There were no addresses on them. She hadn’t even told him where she was living. The only person that knew was Cynthia. And Barb, now. There were return addresses, though, painstaking written on each one. There was even a stamp in the top right corner of one, like he’d put it on before remembering he couldn’t send them. 

Tatiana couldn’t choose between them, couldn’t bring herself to open any of them. For some reason, she found herself on the verge of tears again. She had truly become soft over the past year. “Which one should I-?”

“I don’t think it matters, I don’t know when they were written,” Barb offered. “I think he wrote the dates on the actual letters inside, we could open them all and then read them in order. Oh, I don’t need to be here when you do it, if you’d rather I hang out somewhere else, in the room, or-”

“No, stay,” Tatiana insisted, and she ripped the top of the first envelope open. Then the next, and the next, and threw them into the fire one by one, only collecting the letters inside them and saving a bit of paper with Curt’s return address on it. She read the dates on them while trying hard not to read any of the other words, and picked up the earliest one. “This is the first,” she said.

Barb peeked over at it. “Do you want to read it out loud? Or should I? Or are you just going to read it in your head?”

“Will you read it?” Tatiana held out the envelope. 

“Sure.” Barb adjusted her glasses. “ _ Dear Tatiana, it might be a while before I can send these. Don’t know your name, or where you live. Sorry. How have you been up there? Is it as cold as Russia? Are you okay there? You probably know from the agency paper, but Cynthia offered me my job back. I think it was out of pity, but I wasn’t about to turn her down. I think she wants you to work here too when you come back, so maybe we’ll get lucky enough to go on another mission together. Or a few. Who knows, we might even be partners. _ ”

Tatiana took the letter from Barb, accidentally crumpling part of it in her fist. She looked down at it, scanned a little more of it, decided that if she heard any more she’d cry. She shook her head and gave Barb the next one.

“Okay.” Barb looked at her for a little while before commencing to read. “ _ Dear Tatiana, thinking about our run together. Don’t know how to thank you for going to the island for me. I should have been able to do it, I still don’t know what my problem was with that. Spies should be able to prioritize their missions over their personal stuff. Couldn’t do it, so thanks for letting me stay and deal with my shit. _ ”

Tatiana took that one too, and when she set it down she also rubbed her eyes. She wasn’t crying yet, but she could feel it building up. 

Barb took the next one. “ _ Dear Tatiana, I _ \- sorry, I think he was drunk, look at this.” She extended the letter, and indeed some of the lines drooped down or shot up in places, making the composition of the letter uncomfortable and loose. 

“Keep reading,” Tatiana urged, but the mood felt a little lighter now. 

“ _ Dear Tatiana, I’m sorry that I lied about your family. I just didn’t know how many more computers there were and you had done so much for me and I didn’t know what to do. Sorry I told you it was okay to go back it was a fucking stupid thing to do- _ ”

“No,” Tatiana said sharply, and took that letter back as well. She wiped her eyes. 

Barb took it again. “I’ll just read the end of this one, okay? It’s really sweet.”

Tatiana twisted her mouth up, but her eyes were already filling with tears. 

“ _ I sort of have nothing to go on now. I did everything I did for Owen but I can’t now anymore but it’s fine because I know you have my back, right? It would be okay if we got that strength from each other, I think. Can’t wait for you to get back. Lots has happened that doesn’t fit in a letter. I’m worse without you. Love, Curt Mega. _ ”

Tatiana’s hands were over her face, her shoulders shaking. They were better together, Curt had gotten that right.  _ Love, Curt Mega. _ Why couldn’t she be that honest and open with herself? Why couldn’t she tell people that she loved them before it was too late?

“Hey hey hey,” Barb said, putting the letter down and wrapping her arm around Tatiana’s shoulders. “It’s cute, he misses you, it’s nothing to cry about.” 

Tatiana sniffed, trying to calm herself down. “No, I know, he’s just so dumb.” She wiped her face again, gathered the letters up into her hands. “He’s- he is too quick to trust for a spy.”

“Are you really okay out here?”

“You know I hate it,” Tatiana returned. “But I think I’m okay. It’s just- my best friend-”

“Yeah, I get it,” Barb said, her voice changing from concerned to conversational. She was trying to distract Tatiana and make her happier again. “I was totally the same. Whenever he’d go out I’d be waiting with the comm on, like, hanging off every word he said.”

Tatiana shook her head. “No, it’s not-”

“Hm?”

“You liked him. You had a crush on him.” Tatiana shook her head. “I do not. I’m-” She laughed. Barb’s tactic was clearly working, she felt some of the pressure of missing him disappearing. “I’m so far from having a crush on him the situations are barely comparable.”

“Are you serious?” Barb was staring at Tatiana now. “You two- what?”

“What do you mean?” Tatiana looked back at her, a smile still playing on her lips. 

“You two weren’t together?” Barb sounded disbelieving. “You were never with him?”

Tatiana shook her head again, and she laughed again, and she rubbed her face with a hand. “No, no. Ew. No.” It dawned on her then that just because Curt came out to her, it didn’t mean he came out to all of his friends. “No, we were only ever friends.”

“You’re pulling my leg,” Barb said theatrically. 

“No. I am not, we really never did that. I did meet his mother, but…” Tatiana shrugged. She didn’t know how to say that she didn’t like Curt and she would never like Curt or anyone like Curt because she preferred women. There wasn’t a tactful way to hint at it, she realized. 

Barb’s hand dropped to her knee. “I seriously thought you two were an item. For like, a whole year.” 

“You were mistaken, then,” Tatiana said, and was suddenly overcome by a sense of emptiness. She was scared to tell someone she believed she trusted one simple thing about herself. A thing that could get her persecuted, but still. She wished she could know it was safe to tell Barb. She couldn’t. “I would never keep you two apart,” she added, because the silence was getting uncomfortable. 

Barb shook her head, a smile back up on her face. She looked down at her plate. “Nah, we… I’m not… it wasn’t going to work out.”

“Probably true,” Tatiana admitted. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. I got over him pretty quickly after that one mission. Like, something clicked and I realized that if nothing had happened yet then nothing was going to happen.” Barb shrugged. “And to be honest, I feel way happier. I’m not waiting for something, I’m not wishing for something, I’m just-” She shrugged. “-way better this way. And having conversations with Curt without making them awkward really improves quality of life at the agency.” She chuckled. 

A sort of gladdened thrill went through Tatiana, and she was unsure why. It shouldn’t matter to her what her friends’ love lives looked like. But still she found herself a large percentage more comfortable knowing it. She told herself it was just because she wanted to look out for Curt. She knew that she was lying to herself, but she didn’t want to try and make sense of her bullshit now. She would have more than enough time to do that when she was alone again. She cleared her throat, glad that the fire and a few oil lamps were the only sources of light in the room because she may or may not have been blushing at her own thoughts. “Good for you, Barb.”

“Right?” Barb sighed. “Yeah, I was just hung up on him for so long. It totally shut me off from meeting anyone new, you know?”

Tatiana nodded. Actually, she didn’t know. Apart from various undercover seduction missions, she had never really been with anyone. She was well aware of how sad that was. 

“But, yeah. I’m free now!” Barb did jazz hands for a second, and then laughed it off, realizing how dorky it looked. “Haven’t met anyone yet, but… yeah. It’s a work in progress. What about you? Any hunky Canadian guys up here?”

“No,” Tatiana said truthfully. “My nearest neighbors live five miles away, and there’s not exactly a bar I could stop at downtown.” She thought on it for a moment. “There’s not even a town.”

Barb laughed again, snorting a little. “Yeah, I guess so. Jeez, I can see how it gets boring out here. There really is nothing to do.” 

“I read. I think.” Tatiana shrugged. “But other than that, no.”

“Well, at least you can talk to someone now,” Barb pointed out, sitting up a little straighter and flipping some of her hair over her shoulder as some kind of indicator that she meant herself, although she’d been the only other person in the cabin in months. 

Tatiana smiled. “That’s a nice change.” 


	4. day four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> they have their second eval session. tatiana struggles through her thoughts to try and answer the questions honestly and to try and pretend she isn't falling in love

“Are you sure you’re ready? We could put it off another day,” Barb said, her voice hushed although there was no one but the recorder - switched off - to hear them. “I could just adjust the schedule, and-”

“I’m ready, it’s fine,” Tatiana said firmly. She nodded at Barb to drive the point home. Not only was she scared that Barb was making notes in her head of when she showed she wasn’t ready for field work that she’d take back and tell Cynthia, but she also didn’t want to look weak in front of Barb, someone she respected. 

“Alright,” Barb drew out the word, like she was waiting for as long as possible to speak so Tatiana could have a chance to give another answer. When none came, she took a seat at the table, pulled the recorder out of its leather bag, placed it in the middle of it, and gestured to the seat across from her. 

Tatiana took it, and tried to get into the right headspace for the eval. Just one more, she told herself. When this one’s over, there’s only one more to go. She gave Barb another nod.

Barb switched on the recorder. “Let the record state that today, February fifth, nineteen sixty-three, is the second of three eval sessions with Tatiana Slozhno.” She gave Tatiana a smile and a thumbs up. “Some of the questions will be asked every session, so you’ll recognize a couple of these. Sorry. Okay, how long have you been working for the agency?”

“I’m not working for the agency.” Tatiana felt her throat threatening to close up again and she kicked herself under the table. 

Barb nodded. “Have you ever held any previous positions as an agent under other powers?”

“Yes.”

“If so, where?” Barb winced. “Yeah, sorry, that wording was awkward, I’m just reading these off.” 

“Under the KGB, then as a free agent.” Tatiana was biting the inside of her cheek now, trying to find the right kind of pain to keep her grounded. She’d already tried her fingernails last session, and that obviously hadn’t worked. 

“Nice, okay, are you an American citizen?” Barb asked. The genuine curiosity behind her voice suggested that she wasn’t sure of the answer to that question herself. 

“I have citizenship, yes. I have a passport,” Tatiana said, envisioning Curt’s mother making it for her. She wondered if she could find it in all of the shit she had lying around. 

“Papertrail? Yes or no?” 

“Obviously no.” All the information stored away on her was in some network, untouchable, unreachable, undestructable. She couldn’t get to it, but hopefully then neither could the government. 

“What made you leave the field?” Barb asked. 

Tatiana remembered this question from the first session. She remembered that she lied about it. She thought, tried to come up with a reason that an agent might leave the field that Cynthia wouldn’t second-guess. “Um, I…” Tell the truth, she yelled at herself. “I got hurt blowing up the compound. My ears… my eardrum popped because of the explosion.” Fuck. She was digging herself into a deeper and deeper hole. She couldn’t bring herself to look up at Barb. She didn’t know why she couldn’t tell the truth, or why her lies were so unconvincing. Usually she could pull off even a complicated lie with talent, with finesse. 

Barb seemed to forget that the recorder was running then, because her papers were abandoned on the table, and she stared at Tatiana unabashedly, trying to figure her out. 

Tatiana wanted to say that she was sorry, that she wished Barb could know her but she didn’t even know herself. She kept her eyes were focused on the recorder, however, and she couldn’t shake the knowledge that this would be in her file forever. 

Barb covered her confusion with a cough, then proceeded. “What was the last mission you performed before hiatus?”

“Chimera.” 

“And did any events of that mission impact your decision to take time off?” Barb looked- not scared, not worried even. There was a deep concern on her face, though, misunderstanding, maybe sadness. She was recycling questions again.

“Yes,” Tatiana said, against what her body was trying to make her say. One of the first truthful answers she’d given. But then, the need to justify the answer crept in, the fear that Cynthia would see the weakness that had grown in her. “Not much, though. It was just like any other mission.”

Barb nodded slowly. “Okay, so, physical stuff. Have you noticed any changes in your weight over the past year?”

“I maybe lost a little,” Tatiana said. She was done lying. She told herself that if she lied again today, she'd break one of her own fingers. Stay honest. Cynthia wanted her and thought that she was good enough, and nothing she could say, no matter how pathetic she’d become, could change that. She repeated that message in her head. 

“Have you been keeping up regular levels of exercise corresponding to what you did before your hiatus began?” Barb asked. It was like she had some sort of lie detector in the room betraying Tatiana to her, because upon the last truthful answer, her voice became more relaxed, closer to her usual chipper tone. 

“No,” Tatiana admitted, shaking her head. She even laughed a little, feeling the panic and expectations retreat a little. Being honestly might actually have helped. “Not at all.”

Barb chuckled. “Well, I don’t work out at all, so…” Her gaze snapped to the recorder and she pushed her glasses up. “Anyways, since your hiatus began have you experienced any broken bones?”

“Not since, no.”

“Muscle tears?”

“Maybe? I don’t think so.”

“Aches and pains?”

“Um…” Tatiana thought. “My knees hurt when I get up after sitting still for a while. And- oh, my back.” She reached over her shoulder and tapped the spot. “I think it’s- how you say- a pinched nerve? I think I pinched a nerve.”

Barb nodded. “Alright, and have you had any illnesses over the past year? I don’t think they mean colds, just big things like pneumonia or whatever.” 

“Then no, I have not. I never really get sick,” Tatiana answered. Another truth. Saying these things out loud was making her feel a lot better, more relaxed, less on edge. It felt like she was talking to a friend instead of being evaluated when in fact she was doing both. 

“Well, lucky you.” Barb smiled, stuck her script of questions back into its folder. “Okay, that’s it for today, date is February fifth.” She turned the recorder off. “You didn’t freak out!” Excitement brewed beneath her words.

“I didn’t freak out,” Tatiana repeated. “I was pretty close for a minute, but…” She shrugged. “I got through it.” And she really had. She didn’t deserve to feel proud of herself - it wasn’t that big an accomplishment next to all of her failures - but she was beginning to, despite her thoughts. 

“Are you really sore?” Barb asked, putting the recorder back into its black leather bag. 

Tatiana nodded. “I’m not sure what happened. I think I’m not doing as much as I used to but when I want to do something I forget that my body is out of practice. And it hurts.”

“Where’s the nerve on your back? Barb asked, walking around behind Tatiana. 

Tatiana reached over her shoulder and tapped it. 

Barb’s hand flitted around the spot before asking, “Can I-”

“Yeah,” Tatiana answered quickly. The word almost caught in her throat. She wasn’t nervous, but her body was suddenly behaving as if she was, and she didn’t want to try and explain it to herself. 

Barb pressed her thumb over the spot Tatiana indicated and moved the muscles beneath the skin by applying a little bit of force. 

Tatiana jerked away and turned to Barb, glaring. “That hurt.” Her mouth opened in a silent, scandalized gasp. “Why are you laughing?”

Because Barb was laughing, a hand over her mouth to try and muffle it. “I’m sorry- it’s just- that’s not a pinched nerve, Tati. You just have a knot in your back muscles.” She giggled some more. “A pinched nerve would feel a lot worse, and be a lot harder to fix. Jeez, you’re almost as overdramatic as Curt.”

“I am not,” Tatiana retorted. She was smiling too widely to hide it. “How do I fix this knot?”

“You just have to un-knot it, I guess. Put heat on it and rub it until it’s faded away.” Barb shrugged. “Have you never had a knotted muscle before?”

“Pain is pain,” replied Tatiana defensively.

Barb shook her head, still laughing, and gestured over to the living room. “Go sit on the couch, I’ll take care of it.”

Tatiana did as she was told, sitting awkwardly on the couch and waiting while Barb packed the recorder back into her baggage, where it would stay until their last session. When Barb came back, she turned to smile at her, and said, in a mocking tone, “What, are you going to give me a massage?”

“Shut up,” Barb replied immediately, “before I change my mind. Do you want a huge knot in your back?”

“No,” Tatiana answered, rolling her eyes at Barb. 

“Then stop making fun of me.” Barb rolled her eyes back. Then, her jesting manner faded and she almost seemed to shrink a little bit. “So, like…” She was fiddling with the hem of her skirt. “Um, do you mind taking- ugh.” She covered her face, which was tinged red, with a hand. 

“Oh, right.” Tatiana pulled her sweater over her head and draped it across the back of the couch. The room normally would have felt cold to her in just a tank top, but now it was warm. On second thought, it might not have been the air in the room but instead her skin that was heating up.

Barb cleared her throat a few times and sat on the couch behind Tatiana. She breathed on her fingers in an attempt to warm them up before she touched Tatiana’s shoulder.

Tatiana closed her eyes, wincing as pressure was put on the sore spot. She told herself not to think about what was happening, worried that if she let it linger too long on her mind she’d perceive it as something it wasn’t. She tried to relax, sure that it would help the massage work, but if anything she was getting tenser. Not in a bad way, but her body was on edge. 

She drifted like that, eyes closed to her living room, in almost a different plane of existence but at the same time extremely grounded by Barb. She was so aware of every touch, but of nothing beyond that. The dull ache in her back became the only sensation she felt, and she fell into a state of longing for it. 

Barb’s voice pulled her slowly back to reality, the gentle sound of it slipping into her alternate dimension. Then she realized that Barb was actually trying to speak to her, and she opened her eyes. 

Embarrassment overtook her, and she felt her face heating up. “Sorry, what?”

“Oh, um, I just said you should try moving your shoulder,” Barb said, putting her hands down in her lap. “See if it’s feeling any better.”

Tatiana lifted her arm, flexed it and stretched it. It was completely painless. She’d felt sore right up until then, too. It was like Barb’s work had all taken effect at once. She let out a breath as she swung her arm around in a little circle. “It feels like it was never hurt,” she confessed, and she turned around to face Barb. “Thank you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Barb murmured, looking down. “I’m trying to get you to join our agency, it’s the least I can do.”

“It’s working,” Tatiana said, emboldened by god knows what, possessed by something she’d been pushing down since Barb arrived. 

“Good.” Barb peered up at her, and then she sort of leaned in, putting her face a little too close to Tatiana’s. 

There was a moment that was there and then gone, something hanging in the air just for a second, in the inch between them. Tatiana was sure Barb was going to kiss her. She didn’t know what put the thought in her head, or how reasonable it was to assume, but she was almost positive. It hit her - and she let it - for the first time that she very much wanted Barb to kiss her, nearly too badly to bear. She couldn’t move, even though she wanted to. Time passed. 

The moment was gone. 

“Um, I should-” began Barb, and the same time as Tatiana said, “I’ll get my shirt-”

They both stopped, looked at each other once more from a little bit further away. Then Barb smiled, and Tatiana laughed softly, and Barb got up. 

“I’ll be in my- your room,” Barb said quietly. “I should be- um. I should tinker with- something.” She nodded one last time, and then left the living room. 

Tatiana let out a sigh, leaning back against the couch. She was completely fucked. She didn’t know why she’d expected that to go the way she pictured it, and she was an idiot because of it. She cursed at herself in her head for a few minutes before snatching her sweater and pulling it back on. She had to get her head out of the clouds if she ever wanted to get back in the field. 


	5. day five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tatiana spends a night figuring herself out, and in the morning, she accepts some gifts from barb

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is my favorite chapter just a heads up,,,, i love them sm  
> also sorry for the late update feb break ended and i just... forgot i had things other than school

Day Five

Tatiana had gotten the whole night to think things over. She didn’t get any sleep, even though her back felt the best it had in months. She’d just laid on the couch and thought. She thought about herself, something she never had time to do when she was in the field. She had been ignoring herself for too long, scared of what she might find if she dwelled on herself. She dwelled on herself that night, though, and when the cold morning sun began to creep through the few windows in the wall, she knew herself. 

She didn’t know exactly how to address all the issues she’d found, but at least she was aware of them. She was going stir crazy, she was certain of that. She lacked the focus of a mission and the social interaction of having a cover. She couldn’t wait to get back into the field but she’d treat herself better this time around. She didn’t treat herself well. She pushed down everything she felt and everything she saw so she wouldn’t have to waste time processing it, but that had made her flawed, incapable of telling the truth or even of admitting things to herself. 

She conversed with herself. She looked her fears in the eye and came to some sort of agreement with them, and when the sun shone through those windows she felt less useless. She was not weak, she was traumatized. She was not alone, she had connections. While she may not be with her blood family she had found another that would suffice fine. Her feelings, the ones she’d pushed down since she was fourteen or so, were not an illness, they were just a part of her. 

She couldn’t continue hating herself if she expected herself to succeed. She had to care for each part of herself, like she were one of her friends. She needed to be looked after just as much as anyone else. 

She also thought about Barb. She thought about how it probably wasn’t the safest thing to visit her right now but Barb did it anyways, and that Barb was spending all this time here for her. Barb was doing everything she could to make sure that when she came back to the field, she’d be ready. Barb was doing more than she had to, more than Cynthia told her to do. 

She, after a week of telling herself she was stupid and she was desperate and she was a liar, let herself think it: she was in love. 

And now, as she pulled herself up off the couch and winced at the light of a new day, she couldn’t stop thinking it. She was in love, she was in love, she was in love, she was in love. She knew now that she had been for a while, but it all just hit her now. 

She made coffee on autopilot, halfway through the cup when she realized that she should make some for Barb too. So she did, going through the process again. 

She wasn’t sure how Barb liked it, but she was sure the way she had hers would be too bitter. She mixed in a lot of sugar. Then, just to be sure, she mixed in a little more. She added some milk, because she didn’t have cream. She put a little saucer on top of the cup so the coffee wouldn’t get cold. 

As she sat at her kitchen table, some of her fears crept back. Things she was sure of during the night were muddled now, and the confidence she’d built up was slowly creeping away. It was like she knew that in the real world, it wouldn’t hold up, and sometimes yourself isn’t the right person to be and you need to pretend to be someone you’re not and it’s safer and better that way but it’s stifling and painful and-

“Good morning,” Barb said, coming out of the bedroom. She had an oversized sweater draped over her shoulders that hung down to her thighs. 

Tatiana turned in her chair to see her. “Hi.” Interaction pulled her out of the panic that was setting in, and she let out a breath. “Um, I made you coffee.” She took the saucer off the cup, satisfied by the curl of steam that rose up from the liquid. 

“Oh my god!” Barb exclaimed, sitting down at the table and pulling the cup towards her. “You- aw, you shouldn’t have.” She blew on it. 

“I was making myself some anyways,” Tatiana replied shrugging. “Sleep well?”

Barb nodded. She took a sip of the coffee and tried to cover up the instinctive face she made with a yawn. “This is-” She cleared her throat. “Um…”

“I wasn’t sure how you like it,” Tatiana said quickly, rushing an apology. “I thought you’d want it sweet because-”

“I do, but how much sugar is in here?” Barb asked, looking down at it. 

Tatiana began to laugh, shaking her head. “I’m sure I put in far too much.” 

“Uh, yeah.” Barb nodded, took another sip, winced again. 

“You don’t have to drink it,” Tatiana said, standing up and taking the cup. She dumped it out into the sink. Sure enough, a trail of sticky sugar granules slid like sludge out of the cup, following the liquid. “I’ll make some more, you can just put in whatever you want.” She began heating the pot up again.

“Thanks,” Barb said gratefully. “Seriously, it’s really nice of you to do that.”

“You’re my guest,” Tatiana reminded her. “I should be taking care of you.”

Barb giggled under her breath, looking down at the table. 

Tatiana swallowed. God, she was in love. The teapot began to whistle, and she almost burned herself when she poured it through a new filter. She put the cup on the table in front of Barb and indicated where the milk and sugar were. 

It felt so strange to be honest with herself about it. Freeing, in one way. Confusing in another. She couldn’t tell if she was going to regret letting herself feel things yet. It was too early to tell. And it was a lot to process. After years of processing nothing, everything at once was a little bit daunting. 

Barb added the right proportions of milk and sugar to her drink and brought it back to the table. “So, I have some things for you.”

“Hm?” Tatiana sat back down as well. 

“You’ve been gone a year,” Barb said, almost disbelieving. “Of course we’ve been noodling around in the lab, and some stuff has worked.”

“You brought it here?” Tatiana raised her eyebrows. 

Barb shrugged. “Just what I could fit into my bags. And just what I designed for you.”

Tatiana’s heart must have skipped a beat. “You invented things for- but I’m not in the field here. I will not be back in the field before I go down to the agency, so why would I need them now?”

“It’s not spy stuff,” Barb corrected. “It’s just… ever since the Chimera mission and you leaving I kept thinking how difficult it would be to live off the grid, so I put my mind to how I could make it easier. Just a few little things.” She gave a little shrug. 

“You…” Tatiana was speechless. She got her thoughts in order, so touched that she could feel a sort of warmth in her chest. “You made stuff for me?”

“Yeah.” Barb smiled. “There’s so much that can be improved with a few little doodads up here. So, yeah. And when I say a few, I mean a whole bag full. I packed as many of them as I could fit, but the bag wasn’t as big as I would have hoped, so I had to leave a couple of them back at the lab.”

Tatiana shook her head. “I can’t- thank you. Thank you so much.”

“It was my pleasure,” Barb insisted. “Seriously, I love tinkering around with shit. Hang on, I’ll go get them.” She got up and went into the bedroom. 

Tatiana tapped her fingers on the table. She was almost jittery now in the minutes without contact. After being alone for so long, she didn’t think it would take her just the few days it had to get accustomed to other people again. It would be hard when Barb left for more than one reason. 

“Okay,” Barb said, the strap of her duffel bag over her shoulder. She sat back down and hauled the bag onto the table. “So, some of these aren’t perfect, because, you know, I wasn’t sure what your actual situation was up here. I’ve adapted some of them, but I don’t have the resources here that I have at the lab.” She shrugged.

“No, it’s- I’m sure I will be able to use them all,” Tatiana assured. She looked at the bag, and thought her heart was going to burst. It was so foreign to have someone care for her. Even when she was with Curt, the circumstances around them were so chaotic that they didn’t get to have this kind of relationship. 

Barb grinned, unzipped the bag. “Right. First we have this,” Barb said, pulling it out. Her voice changed a little, becoming more professional, more excited. “This will conserve energy that your panels collect during the day and transform it into something storable. It’s not perfect, but it should be able to get enough each day to keep you going through the night.” She patted the large, square thing. “We could hook it up later. I thought that might be useful. I call it a power block.”

“I didn’t even… there is technology that can do that?” Tatiana looked down at it. 

“Well, batteries are getting more and more versatile and powerful,” Barb explained. “Also, you’ve been gone for a year. The tech world moves fast. Next up, we have this.” She took another thing out of the bag. 

“What is-”

“Let me explain,” Barb interrupted. She patted the top of the thing. “This is a kind of a space heater that’s completely new. Courtesy of me. It can actually analyze the shape of a room with sound software I built into it, so it never wastes excess heat and you’ll never be cold. I know you have your fireplace in the living room, but maybe this could go in the bedroom?”

“You’re- this is insane,” Tatiana said, shaking her head. “You’re a genius.”

“You don’t know how long I’ve waited to hear that,” Barb said primly. She pulled her hair back out of her face. “Want to see the next one?”

“Do I?” Tatiana smiled at her. 

Barb grinned back. “This little thing is like your own personal radar. If you ever want to know if you’re going to have visitors, or just if someone is passing within a five mile radius of you, just set this up and take a look. It has a battery charge so you can take it with you if you leave the house, but it also plugs in.” Barb pulled out a cord. 

Tatiana got up to see it more closely, running a hand over the surface of the now blank display screen. Now this- this made her feel like a spy again. “It’s so pretty.”

“Then you’ll love this one,” Barb countered, pushing her back down into her seat. 

Tatiana was sure she would.

“An angle adjuster,” Barb said, holding it up. It had lots of gears. “For your solar panels. This will detect which direction the sun is coming from via a little heat sensor and then angle the panels in response so you get as much sunlight from each day as you can.”

“That’s brilliant. I do that myself now,” Tatiana murmured, looking down at the device. “Yeah, incredible.”

“Yay!” Barb squealed. “Okay, I really only have one more thing for you. Sorry I couldn’t pack more.”

Tatiana shook her head. “You’re kidding. Barb, I didn’t expect any of these. Whatever you give me is more than enough.”

“I think you’ll like this one, so-” Barb pulled it out. It looked like a version of the agency tablet Tatiana had now, but sleeker, less plastic and more metal. “I know we already gave you one of these before you left, but this is an upgrade. The Chimera compound you blew up had some pretty useful information on it that I was able to siphon off before it exploded. Including the ability to make connections completely off the radar.”

Tatiana’s hand went to her mouth. She was scared to voice what she thought that meant, in case she was wrong, and she got her hopes up for nothing. 

“It also holds a charge better, of course.” Barb held it carefully, like one might hold an infant. “I used that new battery tech I put in your power block in this as well. It needs to be charged but it can be unplugged.”

“Wait- please just tell me what it does-” Tatiana said, unable to manage full sentences. She felt a tightness in her throat, and she held a hand to her mouth. 

“Oh, it lets you make calls that are completely untraceable, both after and during the connection,” Barb explained. “It reaches pretty much anywhere but Africa and Asia, sorry I couldn’t give it a broader range. So you just call, like you did with your old one, but this time, no one would be able to find out. I even turned the tech against itself and blocked out Chimera. Literally no one will know, the call even gets erased from this and the device you contacted after it’s done.”

“God, so- Curt-” Tatiana looked from the device to Barb, tears welling in her eyes. She stood up, coming over to get a closer look at it. 

“Yes!” Barb nodded, standing as well. “But I was thinking a little broader, if you don’t-”

Tatiana shook her head. This couldn’t- there was no way that this was actually happening, it couldn’t be. She couldn’t wrap her head around it, it was too much at once. 

“International intelligence agencies can’t see this either,” Barb said, her voice softer. 

Tatiana took the tablet, tears rolling down her cheeks. “H-how will they know? How will they know- know it’s me?”

“Well, it’s not activated yet,” Barb explained. “When I get back to the lab, I can get it started, and then all you need to know is their phone number. It works for just audio as well. I’m sorry you can’t use it right now, I couldn’t figure out a way to activate it ahead of time. Sometime next week you should be able to use it.”

Tatiana held the tablet to her chest, leaning her head onto Barb’s shoulder. “Thank you s-so much, I can’t- I can’t-” She tried to take a deep breath, choking on her own tears. “I never thought I’d be able to do this. I thought-”

“It’s okay,” Barb said, rubbing her back. “It’s just a secure line, Tati.”

“But it’s not,” Tatiana replied, words thick with tears. “I haven’t been able to- to talk to them since I was fifteen, they- they think I’m dead, or- I just-”

Barb nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m sure they’ll love hearing from you.”

Tatiana tried to smile at her. “I owe you- I owe you everything. Please, t-tell me what I can give you, this is all I’ve wanted for years and years and-”

Barb shook her head. “You don’t owe me anything.”


	6. day six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tatiana makes herself stop lying, both in her eval and about her feelings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one,,,, this ones the one ladies,,,,, the one we've been waiting for

“The date is February seventh. Nineteen sixty-three. Today is the final session evaluating Tatiana Slozhno.” Barb smiled at Tatiana over the table and the recorder. She hung the recorder's bag over the back of her chair and sat down. “How long have you been on this hiatus?”

“Almost a year,” Tatiana said. Truth. She had decided that she was sick of lying, that it was what made her panic during the sessions, and that if she could just get through this last one telling the truth, then Cynthia would trust her and she’d feel better about herself and it would all go alright. 

“What made you leave the field?” asked Barb, looking up from her papers. 

Tatiana shrugged. “It wasn’t safe for me to be on the grid, at least not for a little while. And- I think, mentally I needed a break.” 

Barb nodded, like it made sense to her. “And has your physical state changed since going on hiatus?”

“Yes. I’m not as practiced as I was a year ago. I haven’t been keeping up with training.” This was easy, she realized. She was just talking to Barb. She trusted Barb. There was nothing to panic over in the first place. 

“Has your mental state changed since going on hiatus?” Barb looked to her, waiting for an answer. She was clearly wondering how much of it would be true. 

“I think it has.” Tatiana was looking down at the wood of the table now, getting distracted by its grain. Her mental health had always been difficult for her to talk about, but she had to get through it. So her mental health was shot. So what? Every spy’s was. It shouldn’t be difficult to talk about. “I got used to being alone here and I- I think I might need some kind of therapy when I come back, but it’s not something that can’t be fixed.”

Barb’s mouth was open, she looked like she was about to say something, but then she remembered her script, and her gaze flicked back down to another question, filing away what she wanted to say for later. “What was the last mission you performed before hiatus?”

This was a question that had been recycled every session. It wasn’t one that she could give varied answers on, so she didn’t understand why, but she answered it nonetheless. “Chimera.” 

“And did any events of that mission impact your decision to take time off?” asked Barb, looking at her encouragingly. 

Tatiana bit her lip. “Yes. It was because of this mission that we deemed it unsafe for me to be in the field. It was too risky. The mission involved treason. After it was over, we didn’t know how easily Cynthia would forgive us, so we just… we decided to stay safe, for once.”

“Okay,” Barb said, nodding. “Alright. Was your last mission a solo or a team?”

“Team.” Tatiana cleared her throat. “You, me, Curt, the Informant.”

Barb smiled, like she was remembering that last night they’d spent together, before everything went to shit. She again looked like she had something to say, and again shelved it for later in favor of another one of the questions. “Is there anything that the agency does not know about the mission that you think should be on record?” 

Tatiana recognized this whole sequence from their first session. She wondered if Barb was just going through the ones she lied about. Meaning nearly all of them. She sighed. “Well, Curt probably told them everything, and you probably told them everything, but… I was shaken by it. I did not know that a network like that was possible, and I still don’t know how to wrap my head around it. It must have taken a really good spy to pull off that cover for that long under such high pressure.” She ran a hand through her hair, realizing that she wouldn’t have liked to be Owen, wouldn’t have liked dealing with Chimera.

Barb nodded. “For sure, I mean- he was one of the greats.” She shrugged, looking back down at her paper. “And was that mission a success?”

If she was honest, no. She’d like to say yes, but an agent doesn’t die on a successful mission. Chimera would have been dismantled and gone if it was a successful mission. “It was the start of one, I guess. Chimera is still out there, but at least we know where to start now.”

“Right. And Tatiana, is there anything else you think that the agency should know about you, or anything, before having you back?” Barb asked, arranging her papers before sticking them back into the folder. 

Tatiana thought. “I don’t think so. I’m not a difficult agent, I have been doing this since I was a child. I’m used to field work, I’m good at it.” There really wasn’t anything she could say that Cynthia didn’t already know. “Oh, when I come back, can I- is it too much to ask if-” She laughed quietly. Trying to phrase it without getting choked up was proving more difficult than she’d imagined. “I’d like to work with Curt. Please let me work with Curt. Not once a year or something like that, but as his partner. Please. Thanks.” She nodded to Barb, signifying that she was done. 

“Alright, that concludes my final eval session with Tatiana Slozhno,” Barb said, sounding proud of herself. Or proud of Tatiana. “February seventh, nineteen sixty-three.” She clicked the recorder off. 

Tatiana let out a breath, getting up out of her chair. 

“Hey,” Barb said, following her up and meeting her halfway around the table. “You did it.”

Tatiana nodded, hugging Barb. Some of her hair got in her mouth, and she didn’t even care. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Yeah, I did.”

“What changed?” asked Barb, rubbing Tatiana’s back, resting her head on her shoulder. 

Tatiana stepped back. “I don’t know. I was getting myself into this thing- how you say- spiral? When I was lying, and I don’t know why it bothered me so much, because I lie for a living, but… it did, but I couldn’t not lie. So this spiral got worse and I wanted to break the pattern.” She realized she was rambling. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s amazing. I’m so proud of you,” Barb said, her voice almost a whisper. “Like, really proud. I’ve seen a lot of spies who never get out of that spiral.”

“Thanks,” Tatiana replied, and it hit her that Barb would be leaving tomorrow. She felt her chest contract at that, felt ice creeping through her veins. She wasn’t sure what she’d do when Barb was gone, all her memory of the days before the visit disappearing. She wasn’t sure how much longer she’d be stuck in the cabin alone, and she’d just let herself get used to being taken care of. She wasn’t ready. “Wait-”

“What?” Barb grabbed the recorder off the table, put it back into its bag, the strap of which she slung over her shoulder. 

“We need to keep talking, okay?” Tatiana sat back down, tapped the table to indicate Barb she was serious. “I’m- I’m not done, I need-” She took a breath, focused her thoughts. There really was limited time left. “I still have things to tell you.”

Barb leaned against the table, looking confused. “Um, should I get the recorder back out? I sort of already said we were done, but…”

“No, I just- I feel like-” Tatiana sighed, telling herself to calm down. “You’re going to be gone soon. There is still so much we have to talk about, and there’s not enough time.”

“What do you want to talk about?” Barb asked. 

Tatiana stood up and kissed her. She did it before she could overthink it, before she could stop herself. It felt natural and relaxing, as long as she didn’t think about it. A lot of tension she didn’t even know she’d been harboring left her body. She took a step back. “I’m sorry, I didn’t-”

Barb shook her head. “No, don’t-”

“I should have asked-”

“No, Tati, it’s fine,” Barb said. Her voice was still just as warm as it had been a minute ago. “I’m serious. It was… sort of cool.” 

Tatiana tried to smile, and her body wasn’t cooperating. “Wait, you’re not-”

“What, mad at you?” Barb shook her head. “No way. I’d never be mad at you, especially not over something like this.” She shrugged, and she was almost whispering when she said, “Actually, can I have a do over? I wasn’t ready that time.”

Tatiana nodded, her heart in her throat. She closed her eyes, leaned in, kissed Barb. Barb’s lips were just as soft, as gentle, as excited as her voice often was. 

“Hey,” Barb whispered, leaning her forehead against Tatiana’s. “You’re kidding me, right?”

Again, Tatiana felt a sinking sensation in her chest, in her stomach. She must have done something wrong. “I do not think so.”

“It’s just, like-” Barb laughed to herself for a second. “Remember how I was so fucked up over Curt?”

“Yes,” Tatiana answered, feeling uncomfortable. 

“And I let it go, and the reason why I did that,” Barb continued, “was because I was sort of getting fucked up over you.”

Tatiana’s whole body felt warm. Her nerves and discomfort about the conversation began to fade, replaced with a tense energy that made her feel like she was in the middle of a mission again. Adrenaline. 

“But, god, you don’t ignore me,” Barb breathed. “You talk to me like I’m a person, not a dog, and you- do you like me?”

“I’m sort of in love with you,” Tatiana confessed, her voice faltering through the words. 

Barb put her arms around Tatiana’s waist and leaned back so she could see her properly. There were tears welling up in her eyes. “Jeez, I don’t even-” She sniffed. “Shit.” 

“What?” Tatiana touched Barb’s cheek. She felt like it was okay to do that now, even though she was getting butterflies in her stomach just from moving at all. 

“It feels really good to have someone like me,” Barb said, her voice watery, and a tear slipped down her cheek even though she was smiling. 

Tatiana wiped it away with her thumb. “So you-”

“Uh-huh.” Barb nodded, and another tear fell. “I mean- god knows I’m into men too, but-” She cut herself off, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. 

Tatiana pulled her into a hug. “Is it okay that I love you?” Her words were catching in her throat again, no matter how hard she told herself not to cry. A year ago, a month ago, hell, a day ago, she wouldn’t have been able to ask that. It was just luck that she’d found someone she trusted that much, and then fallen in love with her. 

“Of course,” Barb murmured, her words getting lost in Tatiana’s sweater. She looked up at her. “Is it okay that I love you back?”

Tatiana nodded, kissing Barb’s forehead. “Yes.” 

They cried. Barb was already crying, and Tatiana, her control over her emotions weakened by her year alone, followed shortly after. It was cathartic, and it filled up the whole cabin. They told each other they were in love in as many different ways as there were, told each other things they loved about each other. After an indeterminate amount of time, they broke apart, Barb going back to her chair and Tatiana flitting around the kitchen, both of them still packed full with things they hadn’t yet said. 

There was a little bit of silence, and then Barb said, “I’m going to miss you. When I go back to the states.” 

Tatiana twisted her mouth up into what must have been a grimace. Somehow, she’d let that fact slip her mind, forgetting the inevitability that whatever she and Barb could foster in the cabin wouldn’t last. She wanted to say that there would be a way to make things work, but she’d learned long ago not to promise things she couldn’t be sure of. “I’ll miss you too,” she tried. 

Barb nodded. “Thanks.”

“Hey, why don’t we forget about that,” suggested Tatiana. “Let’s read or go out on the tundra, or you can tell me how to work my new panel angler, or… let’s just be together for today and tomorrow.”

“I like the sound of that,” Barb said, taking the hand Tatiana offered her and letting herself get pulled over to the fireplace. 

Tatiana sat on the couch, looking into the fire, and waited for Barb to sit as well before she spoke. “Barb, will you really be with me? Just for a day, or however much time we have left, but will you please- just until you leave?”

Barb leaned her head onto Tatiana’s shoulder. “It would be an honor.” She sounded sad and proud at the same time. 

They sat like that for a while. There wasn’t much else to say, and they didn’t need to talk to be comfortable with each other. They stayed cuddled up on the couch, enjoying the warmth of the fire and the quiet of the tundra. 

Tatiana still couldn’t believe she had said what she said that day. It was almost like she’d been possessed by a braver, more collected thing than herself, and that thing had controlled her words. She was still scared, in a way, just as scared as she ever was. There was something about facing fears, though - telling the truth all the way through the evaluation session even though she knew how she answered would determine her future, acknowledging that there were other people to be with than men, voicing her feelings towards Barb - that made them seem less daunting, in a way. If only for a little while, she was happy. She was content. She wasn’t alone. It was such a calming, warming thing to be with someone. 

And Barb, of all people, the woman she found all of her spare thoughts taken up by over her year alone, the woman who just by chance happened to knock on her door a week ago, was perfect to be with. Asking her out like that was more a formality, almost in humor, just to let Barb know that she was wanted, that Tatiana wanted her. 

That afternoon was the best one out of the year Tatiana spent in Canada. Barb walked her through the mechanics of the new tablet, and while she was learning how to use it she told Barb about her family. They talked about matters of national security like nothing because to them, it was nothing. They talked about normal things, about their lives, about their aspirations. 

Barb told Tatiana that she’d wait for her to come back until the agency deemed it safe. 

Tatiana told Barb that when she wasn’t calling her family with the new tablet, she’d be calling her. 

They tried to cook dinner together, despite neither of them having any culinary talent, and then they suffered through the meal that was the result. 

That night, when they were done talking about everything they could think of, Tatiana didn’t go to the couch to sleep. She followed Barb back to her own room, to her own bed.


	7. day seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tatiana and barb's time together comes to a close

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic has been so much fun for me to work on!! thanks for letting me share it with yall

When the sun came through her bedroom windows, Tatiana was already awake. Just barely, and her eyes were technically still closed, but she was conscious. Conscious of how the cold was bearable not only because of her new space heater but because she wasn’t alone in bed. Conscious of her pillows smelled like the perfume of the woman who’d slept on them for the past week, and conscious of how much she liked that smell. Conscious of how relaxed she felt, how for the first time the cabin seemed like home. 

She opened her eyes, wincing in the sun, and looked over at Barb, who was curled into her. She’d never seen a person more beautiful, and she’d been around the world. 

Barb moved a little, stretched. “Are you awake?” she mumbled, her voice suggesting that she herself had only just begun to wake up. 

“Yes,” Tatiana answered. “A little.” 

Barb propped herself up on her elbows to give Tatiana a kiss. “Hi.”

“Hi.” Tatiana wound her fingers into Barb’s hair. “When do you have to leave?” She didn’t want to ruin the good mood she woke up in, but the question couldn’t go unasked. She decided to just get it over with. 

Barb sighed. “As soon as possible, I guess.” She reached over Tatiana to grab her watch off of the bedside table. She looked down at it. “Yeah, we already slept in a bit. Ugh, I don’t want to get up.”

“You can make your own coffee this morning, I won’t ruin it,” suggested Tatiana. 

“Tempting.” Barb yawned, putting on her watch. She sat up, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. 

Tatiana couldn’t take her eyes off of the freckles that decorated Barb’s back. She cleared her throat, making herself look away. She got up as well, and they got dressed. 

Banter was tossed back and forth, mostly to do with finding clothes to wear, and checking with each other to see if those clothes matched. They were both intentionally ignoring the fact that they would be alone again too soon. They went out to the kitchen, made themselves coffee the way they liked it, and sat at the table much like they had during their eval sessions. 

“Listen, I’ll set your tablet up the second I get back to the lab,” Barb said, earnestly. “Once I configure it you can call anyone, but will you call me? Just every once in a while, it doesn’t have to be an every night thing, but…”

“Of course.” Tatiana nodded, looking over to her bookshelf, where she’d put the tablet. She looked back at Barb. “Although I can’t promise I won’t call every night.”

Barb blushed. She was always quick to blush. She tucked stray pieces of her hair behind her ears. “Good.”

“And you’re sure it can’t be traced-”

“Positive. No one will know that you’re in touch with your family,” Barb promised. 

Tatiana nodded. “And no one will know that I’m in touch with you?”

“Not a soul.” Barb shrugged. “Not that it’s that big a deal if someone were to know, the only people with the technology to trace calls made to or from the agency are people working at the agency.”

“Still. You’re a girl. I’m not a guy.” Tatiana drank some of her coffee, pretended like she hadn’t spent most of her life shoving down her feelings for that very reason. “Aren’t there people at the agency who-”

“Maybe. Doesn’t matter. Cynthia would drag them within an inch of their life if they said anything about it.” Barb sounded proud when she said that. “She might be sort of strict, but her heart’s always been in the right place. Plus, you’re a spy. It’s not like breaking one more law really matters, right?”

Tatiana’s worry was put to rest by that. She let herself smile. “It is a dumb as shit law.”

Barb laughed. “Yeah.” She drank the rest of her coffee. 

They sat with each other in silence. There was nothing to say that they hadn’t already said, and they found comfort in just being in one another’s presence. Barb kept glancing at her watch, seeing how far she could push back her departure, and Tatiana noticed every time, felt bad for keeping her and even worse knowing that she’d be gone soon. 

Finally, it was just getting more painful the longer they put it off, because it was inevitable, and it was becoming all they could think about. The actuality of Barb leaving filled the cabin, like it was pushing her out the door itself. 

“Do you still need to pack anything?” Tatiana said, unable to put it off. “Do you think you’re forgetting something somewhere? Do you want me to look?”

“You’re right, I need to go,” Barb replied. She looked down into her empty coffee cup. “Um, I think I have everything ready, you don’t need to.” She stood up and put her cup in the sink before heading into the room and gathering up all of her bags. She put them by the door, stood still for a minute while checking her tablet, then packed it away as well. She was smiling. “We’re going to see each other again, this isn’t it.”

Tatiana nodded. She knew. That didn’t stop her from wanting to cry. She bit her lip. 

She helped Barb get under her excessive layers of protective clothing, gave her one last kiss before wrapping a scarf around her neck. “I’ll see you on the other side.”

“Tatiana, wait-” Barb pulled the scarf down so it wasn’t covering her mouth. “I sent the audio files of your eval to Cynthia last night. I know I didn’t tell you, but I wasn’t sure when I was going to hear back and I didn’t want to give you any anxiety over it.” 

“Okay,” Tatiana said, not sure what Barb was getting at. 

“She sent me back a response this morning, we’re really lucky I checked before I took off.” Barb’s smile got wider, if possible. “Tati, she thinks you’re fine. She thinks you’re doing better than most spies after a mission with fatalities like that.”

“Well, it has been a year,” murmured Tatiana, but she could barely hear her own words over the relief in her body, the joy in her chest. She could still be an agent. She wouldn’t be trapped up in the cabin forever. She wasn’t broken beyond repair. 

Barb brushed the comment away with a quick wave of her gloved hand. “She also said that she thinks you’ve been off the grid long enough to throw off any suspicions.”

Tatiana felt almost dizzy. “What?”

“You can’t come back with me now, as much as I’d love that, but soon,” Barb said. She put a hand on Tatiana’s shoulder. “You need to prepare a reason for your cover to be gone if you’re keeping the cabin as a safehouse, or sell it if you’re not, and in a few weeks, someone from the agency will come pick you up and escort you back to the states.”

Tatiana shook her head. She was crying again, and was about to remind herself to harden up when she realized that it didn’t matter. Cynthia already wanted her. Barb already loved her. She let herself cry. “I can escort myself,” she managed, wiping her face.

“I know, but it’s agency protocol.” Barb shrugged, and the movement was barely visible under all of her layers. “Oh! Welcome to the agency!”

Suddenly, Barb’s departure didn’t seem as daunting. It wasn’t their last goodbye, it was just a see you later. Because they would see each other again, and it would probably be sooner rather than later. It seemed manageable. A few more weeks… she could do a few more weeks. A few more weeks alone was nothing compared to the last year. 

“I’ll still be waiting for you, even if I’ll only have to wait for a little while,” Barb reminded her, slinging her duffle bag over her shoulder. 

“I love you,” Tatiana said, running her hand under her eyes and catching any stray tears. 

“I love you,” repeated Barb, and she pressed her forehead to Tatiana’s for a moment before opening the door. “I’ll see you soon.” 

“I’ll call- the minute it works, I’ll call,” Tatiana promised. 

“Can’t wait,” Barb said. “Till then?”

The wind blew in through the open door, and the fire flickered behind Tatiana. She knew herself now better than she’d even known herself. She could listen to her own thoughts. She was loved. And even though Barb was going, she wouldn’t really be alone. Not just because she could get in touch with Barb, in touch with her family even, while they were apart, but because people were relying on her again. People cared about her, one person in particular. And as long as she was needed, she wasn’t alone. A few more weeks in the cabin. Then she could talk to Cynthia about the job, call her family as much as she wanted, be with Curt, and spend more time - unlimited time - with Barb. She nodded, finding her voice gone for a moment before saying, “Yes. Until then.” 

Barb gave her one last smile. 

The door closed. 

And she started counting down the minutes until they would see each other again.

**Author's Note:**

> im on tumblr @belkittykelly if any of yall want to cry w me about this play


End file.
